ALASKA UPDATE...

Number 19 December 11, 2003

“I being in the way the Lord led me…” Genesis 24:27

Dear Friends,

Greetings, in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I pray that this letter finds you with a peaceful heart during this usually busy season of the year. As we draw close to the date that the world remembers the Son of God’s birth, may we not forget (even for a moment) Him, the center of our celebrations. It is often easy, in the midst of our busy schedules, to leave God behind. May He still be the priority of our daily lives… that quiet time early in the morning, and before we go to bed.

I know there are times when I’d rather stay up at night doing other things (that I haven’t had time to do during the day), instead of spending focused time with the Lord. It is my heart’s desire to make sure I spend that time with Him every day… especially during this busy time of the year. After all, how can we tell the Lord that we are celebrating His birth, when we don’t even spend time with Him? Would we appreciate it if a friend never spent time with us, yet on our birthday, they celebrated it by giving gifts to each other? Should we not be giving gifts to Him?

As a family, we have sought to make it a focus to “give” something to the Lord each year. (Of course, we should be daily giving our lives over to Him, but this has really helped us keep our focus on the right thing during Christmas time.) We each write out the thing in our life that we need to surrender to the Lord that year. We then each share with the family what we want to “give” to the Lord. After we do this, we fold up the pieces of paper, put the date/year on them, and put them in a box… to add to all the previous year’s papers. Each year, around Christmas time (usually on Christmas Eve), we pull out the last year’s “gifts” and read them out loud. When we were little, the things we wrote on the papers were things like, not being afraid of the dark, keeping our room clean, being obedient, not yelling/bickering, etc… Dad would have us all draw pictures (on the piece of paper) of what we wanted to give to the Lord. It is SO much fun to look back at our drawings! J As we grew older, our “gifts” became more heart issues. Lord willing, we will do it again this year! It has been a few years since we have done it, but it is something we all would like to do again!

(By the way, so far, we only have one picture up on the fridge! If you have any extra family pictures for this year, we would LOVE one… even if we don’t know you personally. You all know all about us from our newsletters, but we don’t know much (if anything) about many of you! We’d love to hear from you.J If you have a newsletter and/or picture you send out at this time of year, please send us one! Our mailing address… for those of you who don’t have it, is: HC04 Box 9119, Palmer, AK 99645 )

Life around here is never dull!!! J However, I guess we couldn’t expect it to be any different with 11 people living in a small cabin! J I have a couple exciting things to share with you that happened in our family over the past couple days.

On Tuesday, the 9th, James was bringing down the “honey-bucket” to empty it before bedtime. (The honey-bucket is our “inside” emergency toilet. It is simply a 5 gallon bucket with a toilet seat on it. After James empties it, he puts in one half gallon of water and one half cup of Clorox to help with the smell… and it really does help.) This is a normal job of his, which he does twice daily. We have often talked of how thankful we are that James has been SO careful not to spill it! Oh, wouldn’t that be AWFUL???!!!

Back to my story… Dad and some of us children were upstairs talking and looking at some pictures. Suddenly, we heard a loud thud and the whoosh of water spilling right behind us. Water???? No! When we spun around to see what had happened, there was James coming out of the “bathroom” (a small curtained off area upstairs) with the “honey-bucket”. He had just spilled the disgusting contents of the honey-bucket all over the upstairs floor! YUCK! You should have seen everyone screaming and jumping out of the way as the 3.5 gallons of liquid came rolling towards us! All the sudden, the din of the noise upstairs escalated several notches, as people screamed, groaned, wailed, and started issuing orders.

Everyone leapt into action. We furiously grabbed all the miscellaneous towels, dirty clothes, and blankets that we could find, to try to quickly sop up the gross mess. We were all spurred into action, by the knowledge of what liquid does on our floors.

You see, we have had several instances with the 5 gallon buckets under the sink overflowing… and the dirty dishwater going right through the cracks between the sheets of OSB flooring into our basement. We CERTAINLY didn’t want this concentrated, yellow liquid going through the upstairs floor and into our living room!!! Well, we must not have worked fast enough, because it went right down through… not only the first floor, but all the way down into the basement!!! This, of course, alerted everyone on the main floor what had really happened… and what all the racket upstairs was from.

Well, believe it or not, we finally got it all cleaned up. It did soak the rug that was upstairs (thankfully it was a remnant of new carpeting that Mom had bought at the thrift for $10), so we just tossed it out the 2nd floor door (for the future balcony) to later be discarded. (The Lord already knew that this carpet would be ruined, and had provided us with a brand new one from some friends of ours just two days before!) We sprayed Lysol all over the floor and anything else that got touched with the liquid!

We were SO glad that Dad and the boys set up the hot water heater the day or so before. (It is working, but we haven’t plumed in any lines yet.) This way, Jonny had plenty of hot water to wash the dirty laundry!!! Otherwise, we would have had to heat up the water outside in the big 55 gallon barrel... which would have taken forever!

I must admit, it is quite funny looking back on it, but it wasn’t funny then! However, while we were cleaning up, we were talking about how fun it would be to write about it in this update! J Doesn’t it seem that James is always the one who is providing excitement for our family?

Well, the next night, this proved to be true! James was doing something with the sink/table. I guess he was adjusting the log under one of the legs. Anyway, he ended up tipping the table so far, that the huge 10 gallon metal container of water (our “water faucet” for the “sink”) fell onto the floor. Unfortunately, it was nearly full, and 7 gallons of water spilled ALL over the floor! Out came the just washed towels, and we once again found ourselves mopping up tons of water! Also, the water went down into the basement again… and landed right on top of the pile of clean laundry! We were all SO glad that it was very clean water! J It was a joy cleaning that up, compared to the night before!

I must say, though, that James is quite handy to have around. He fixes as many things as he breaks… and more (James’ editorial comment)!!! Whenever anything goes wrong during the day, the call “Jaaaames!!!” can be clearly heard! I thank the Lord for a wonderful, “little” brother… Okay, he isn’t “little”, as he is much taller than me, weighs a lot more than me, and has huge hands and feet… but to me, he is still my “little brother”… J Oops, here comes James down the ladder with the honey-bucket! “Don’t spill it, James!” J (Phew, he didn’t! J)

So, that has been our excitement for the last couple days! Living in the country like this, certainly builds character! J God also gives grace for each circumstance that comes our way. If we had known that this was going to happen a few days ago, I don’t think ANY of us would have thought we could handle it. Yet, the Lord provides what we need… when we need it!

The weather around here has been SO beautiful. However, the temperture has been swinging all over the place. A week or two ago it was around zero, then swung down to twenty below zero in a day. The next day, it went up to thirty-two degrees above zero!!! Since then, it has been in the upper twenties… quite nice!

Just yesterday, James insulated the outhouse (see, he is a WONDERFUL help!), and put in a nice little heater. This makes it MUCH easier to use during the frigid winter days. However, the one down-side of the heat, is that now it smells! L Before, everything was frozen… so it didn’t smell! So, would we rather have the cold or the smell??? Maybe we will try putting something in there to help with the stench! J

Christina and the younger children have been thoroughly enjoying the sled dogs. They have spent much time with the dogs. For this reason, we are very thankful that the dogs are SO friendly! The dogs just love all the attention! Christina usually runs the dogs each day. She also takes one of the younger children with her. Maryanna is her “normal” partner! J

Joshua has been a WONDERFUL little brother! He is now very alert and smiles in response to our voices. His feeding times have been much better, and his reflux seems to be doing a lot better! Praise the Lord! We have tried giving him herbal teas, and it seems to help settle his stomach. It has made him much happier!

So, this is what has been going on in our life…

Before I go, I want to share a couple verses that the Lord impressed upon my heart last night…

“Trust in the Lord, and do good… Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass. And He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him… but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.” Psalms 37: 3-7, 9

As we wait upon Him and delight our hearts in HIM, He will give us the desires of our hearts. What will these desires be? Does this mean He will give us whatever we want? No. If our hearts are beating with His heart, then our desires will be HIS desires! It says in the verse that if we have our hearts fixed on Him and He is our ALL in life, then He WILL give us just that. He has promised this to us… notice how many times He promises He will!

Well, I must be going now. I need to cut the boys hair, make dinner, clean-up the house, iron some clothes, and several other things before Dad, Mom, Christina, and Joshua get home from grocery shopping. I pray that the peace and joy of our Lord Jesus will be in each of your hearts today. May you feel His tender, loving arms around you.

Abiding in Him,

Sharia Buckingham

"And now, Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in Thee." Psalms 39:7

(for… Jim, Martha, Sharia (21), Lolly (19), Christina (18), James (15), Jonathan (13), Daniel (11), Maryanna (9), Lydia (6), and Joshua (one month) Buckingham J)